It's been widely reported and that makes it fact-esque. - Stephen Colbert

At Norwegianity, Mark Gisleson thinks we have to vote Democrat. The argument he makes is weak but it's the only one there is.

They [Republicans] want us tired. They want to create outrage fatigue so we'll stay home on November 2. Fuck you if you don't vote this year, and fuck you twice if you don't vote for Democrats (with very few Blanche Lincolnesque exceptions).

It's not a vote for Obama or the stunted solutions of the Wall Street enabled moderates. It's a vote to kill off the idiocy once and for all. Until the 20% hard right is discredited and humiliated, they will continue to be the "he" in he said/she said.

Axelrod tried to bring Madrak in on common goals. "Let me say this. I really believe this is the most consequential time in our lifetime… We are in a struggle, we are in a fight. We don't have to agree, but we all have to lock arms and move forward here."

He then pivoted, kind of making it sound like both sides need to lower the temperature. "Saying we shouldn't be involved in intramural skirmishes, I couldn't agree more. And that goes on both sides… I'm not lecturing you, I'm speaking to everyone involved on our side. There are big things at stake here. The nature of progressive thought is that we go at it, we trade ideas, and that's as it should be. But we have to come together."

No, this isn't another one of those tongue-in-cheek attacks on the rich that have become so fashionable lately, what with them making such horse's asses of themselves. (Via Mark G) I actually have come to believe that rich people really do need our help, not just because it would prevent them from eating us alive but because it's the humane response, the right thing to do.

David Sirota is having a little difficulty telling the difference between Neoliberal economic policies and the kind the GOP has been pushing for decades. (Via Norwegianity)

In simplistic, Lexus-and-Olive-Tree terms, the neoliberal economic argument goes like this: Tariff-free trade policies are great because they increase commerce, and we can mitigate those policies' negative effects on the blue-collar job market by upgrading our education system to cultivate more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) specialists for the white-collar sector.

Known as the bipartisan Washington Consensus, this deceptive theory projects the illusion of logic. After all, if the domestic economy's future is in STEM-driven innovation, then it stands to reason that trade policies shedding "low-tech" work and education policies promoting high-tech skills could guarantee success.

Of course, 30 years into the neoliberal experiment, the Great Recession is exposing the flaws of the Washington Consensus.

Yah think?

David's concerned about the latest neoliberal scam - that the unemplopyment situation can be fixed if we just reeducate and retrain "yesterday's workers for today's jobs" or some shit - but while it's important not to fall for yet another BD excuse for keeping everything as tilted toward their rich friends and Republican soulmates (and their rich friends), wehat's cranking my case is the Orwellian notion that there's anything liberal about neoliberalism.

Everybody, it seems, wants to believe Obama isn't a corporate puppet sell-out. Bob Herbert, who has been very tough on Obama's willingness to give Wall Street anything it wants while refusing Main Street more than the absolute minimum of what it needs, "finally" hears what he's been wanting to hear for a long time.

sim'-pli-cis-m: (n) The belief that the answers to all problems, no matter how complex they may seem, are easy to understand and uncomplicated by nuance or ambiguity.

It has become part of the left-wing's conventional wisdom that Tea Partiers are crushingly stoopid (TBogg calls them "Teatards"). While this viewpoint is not, on the surface, without its merits, I don't believe it's that easy to explain. I don't think most of the people in the video below are so much dumb as ignorant and, in true American tradition, intellectually lazy.

The difference between "stupid" and "ignorant" is one of ability and will. The stupid cannot understand no matter how much information they have, the ignorant can but only if they have enough information for a reasonable analysis, and that requires both the will to search out the pieces and an intellectual work ethic of sufficient strength to connect the dots once the info is in hand.

Not that it would take that much intellectual strength. In most cases an amount of intellectual energy equal to that put out by an 8th-grader writing a short report on a subject about which she cares not a whit would be all that was necessary. Given that the information required to solve our worst problems ought to be a good deal more important to the average citizen than a report on Ecuadorian flax production, one would think most of us would be willing to spend the small amount of time it would take.

Bang for the Buck: Boosting the American Economy

Compassionate Conservatism in Action

Molly

"We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war."

Zinn

"[O]ur time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."

Bono

"True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice, it's a command. ...

God, my friends, is with the poor and God is with us, if we are with them. This is not a burden, this is an adventure."

The Reverend Al Sharpton

Ray wasn't singing about what he knew, 'cause Ray had been blind since he was a child. He hadn't seen many purple mountains. He hadn't seen many fruited plains. He was singing about what he believed to be.

Mr. President, we love America, not because of all of us have seen the beauty all the time.

But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.

Marx

''With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent will produce eagerness, 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime which it will not scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.''